


Like Looking in a Mirror

by kenzz_95



Series: Trektober 2020 [5]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Mirrorverse but from the other side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26806537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenzz_95/pseuds/kenzz_95
Summary: Something is...off about Jim Kirk, and it has been ever since he got back from an away mission earlier that day. Leonard knows his best friend turned boyfriend, he knows something is wrong, and he's going to figure it out.Or: a take on mirrorverse from the side of the regular Enterprise and in which the characters' mirror counterparts were slightly better at being sneaky than they were in TOS.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: Trektober 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948633
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59
Collections: Trektober 2020





	Like Looking in a Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Trektober day 5: Transporter Malfunctions
> 
> This counts because a transporter malfunction is what got them into this situation to begin with.
> 
> Mirror!Jim here is a totally evil asshole doing his best to not look like a totally evil asshole so he's not as outwardly horrible as Mirror!Jim often is. Therefore, the normal mirrorverse warnings don't necessarily apply here.

There was something a bit...off about Jim Kirk. Ever since Jim had gotten back from the away mission he’d been on with Scotty, Uhura, and Chekov, something had been off. Leonard didn’t know if it was just with Jim, or with the entire landing party, but he knew Jim like he knew himself at that point and he could see something was off. 

It was difficult to put his finger on what, exactly, was wrong with this whole situation. There wasn’t any big moment, more like lots of little ones that he was sure Spock would dismiss out of hand if he brought his concerns to the first officer. It was the narrowing of Jim’s eyes when Leonard had greeted him in the transporter room, their somewhat stilted conversation when Leonard had gone to the bridge during lunch to say hello, a complete lack of their usual simple touches, and the fact that Jim had not shown up at their usual table at their usual time for dinner in the mess but had instead been God knows where doing God knows what without any word of notice. And then there was that something in Jim’s eyes, a blue that burned hot as a star but different now. Just a little off. Leonard knew that if he mentioned it to Spock, the Vulcan would tell him that Jim was  _ his _ boyfriend and Spock was not involving himself in Leonard’s “personal matters with the captain”, as though the two of them had had some sort of fight or something. Which they hadn’t. Because Jim had been in bright spirits before he had left that morning, had been kissing “I love yous” into Leonard’s jaw as they laid intertwined on his bed and so they weren’t fighting and Jim wasn’t mad, or at least he had no good reason to be. 

He tried discussing it with Scotty that evening, as the two had crossed paths in their shared bathroom. All Leonard had really wanted to know was if something unusual had happened during the away mission that had yet to be mentioned, or if Jim had mentioned anything when they were down on that planet, but Scotty had been in a horrible mood and had pretty much told Leonard to fuck right out of his business. Scotty was generally good natured, and all told not a terrible person to share a bathroom with, so the outburst only set off more alarm bells in Leonard’s head. Maybe he’d have to go straight to the source.

Leonard entered Jim’s room without buzzing. He’d always had the code, and since they decided a few months ago that their feelings for each other went beyond what was usually considered friendship, they had been sleeping over a lot. He and Jim had been barging into each others’ quarters without buzzing for years at that point, all the way back to the Academy, so his intrusion wasn’t out of the ordinary. What very much so was out of the ordinary was the sight Leonard was greeted with when he walked in Jim’s room. His boyfriend - God, he hated that word sometimes, it made him feel 16, but “partner” sounded a bit serious for something as new as what they were doing - was standing next to his bed, shirtless, and pointing a phaser straight at him.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on with you?” Leonard snapped, not allowing himself to be intimidated by whatever the hell Jim was up to. He knew Jim would never hurt him, but there was something in Jim’s eyes, something that made him doubt that assumption. Jim didn’t look afraid or skittish, as though something had happened on the away mission that had made him jumpy or uneasy. No, Jim’s blue eyes were hard and determined and something else that Leonard hadn't really seen before. He bit the inside of his lip, kept his hands visible but not raised, and held Jim’s eye contact, not backing down until the other man lowered the phaser and forced out a laugh,

“Sorry, Bones, I thought you were someone else. What’re you doing here?”

“Interesting,” Leonard said, crossing the room slowly, cautious but deliberate, “I can’t think of anyone on this ship who would want to hurt you, can you?”

“You know what they say, you can never be too careful! You never said why you were here,” Jim pointed out, his tone light in a way that anyone other than Leonard may have believed. But he wasn’t buying it. 

“What, is it a crime to come say hello to your boyfriend now?” he asked, leaning against the partition in Jim’s quarters, a couple paces away from the other man. 

Something flashed in Jim’s eyes and he grinned wickedly, closing the space between them, “Oh, is that what you’re after? You should’ve just said.”

Jim then brought his fingers up to flit across Leonard’s neck, splaying out over his pulse point and suddenly kissing him, hot and hard and heavy. Leonard indulged it for a moment, because it felt damn good even though it was ever so slightly off in a way he found difficult to express even to himself, and then finally gripped Jim’s shoulders and pushed him back, hard enough that the other man knew he was serious but not so hard as to cause him to stumble backwards.

“That’s not what I’m here,” Leonard shook his head, noticing the glint of anger in Jim’s eyes that couldn’t be more atypical for him in moments like the one they had been having. “You’ve been acting off ever since you got back from that damn planet, and when I tried asking Scotty he nearly bit my head off. So spill, Jim, what’s going on with you.”

“Nothing’s ‘going on with me’, Bones, I’m just the same as I’ve always been,” Jim assured him in that just off from sweet tone of his, “You’ve had a long day, you’re tired, you always work so hard…”

“Don’t you try to fucking gaslight me, kid,” Leonard cut him off, “If you don’t wanna talk about it just  _ say so _ , don’t try to mess around in my head until I don’t believe it myself.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. In fact, you should go.”

Leonard wasn’t winning this one, not tonight. Maybe in the morning, once Jim had slept a full night, they could actually have a rational discussion about what was going on, but this wasn’t going anywhere. So he sighed deeply and turned around to leave the room. This mystery could wait until the morning.

Leonard couldn’t sleep. He felt uneasy, and the way Jim had acted all day, but in the evening especially, had been off-putting to say the least. He tossed and turned for a couple hours before finally giving up on sleep entirely, putting his uniform back on, and dragging himself down to medbay, intent on distracting himself with work. There weren’t any patients at the moment, gamma was typically slow, so he slipped into the lab and tinkered with some things, unable to fully dedicate himself to a project with the mystery of Jim’s odd behavior still weighing heavily on his mind.

He was pulled out of his thoughts about an hour after arriving by a familiar voice coming from medbay. Opening the door to the labs, Leonard saw Jim arguing with the night nurse and holding several hypo vials in his hand.

“Dr. McCoy allows me…” Jim was saying when Leonard rounded the corner and interrupted him,

“What does Dr. McCoy allow you?”

Jim’s emotions were briefly betrayed on his face, more anger than guilt, as he held his hand up, fingers wrapped around the labels of the vials he was holding.

“I need these.”

“Why?” Leonard asked, raising his eyebrows at the other man, “It’s 03:30, Jim, what do you need with a hypo? If you need a sedative I’ll give you one but otherwise go back to bed.”

“You’re not supposed to be on shift right now,” Jim pointed out, deflecting. Leonard rolled his eyes,

“I couldn’t sleep so I came down here to work.”

“And it’s so hard to believe that I did the same?”

“No, but I have a hard time understanding why you’re trying to sneak hypos out of here without permission from myself or another doctor. What do you need those for anyways?”

“That’s captain’s business,” Jim declared, crossing his arms over his chest, “It’s classified.”

“My medbay, my rules,” Leonard countered, mirroring Jim’s posture, “My hypos. So you either tell me or…”

“I need these, doctor. That’s an  _ order _ .”

“Too fucking bad,  _ captain _ . As you should well know, the CMO is responsible for medical matters on the ship, re-fucking-gardless of what the captain says, so you give me the vials or tell me why you need them.  _ That’s _ an order.”

Jim growled, then in one long sweep of his hand knocked a number of vials off the counter as he dropped the ones he was holding on the floor before stalking out of medbay. Leonard and Nurse Ali looked at each other for a moment, and then he bent down, trying to see if he could determine which hypos Jim had been holding.

He looked at the shattered glass and clear liquid on the floor for a moment, not seeing anything interesting at first, but then noticed a section of glass with the label mostly peeled back. He had noticed Jim fidgeting with the labels as he argued, and figured this must be one of the vials Jim had been holding. Picking the glass up carefully, Leonard read the label and when he did his stomach twisted.

Ali was looking at him still, obviously awaiting instruction for how to deal with whatever the hell had just happened. Leonard sighed and squeezed their shoulder gently,

“Get this cleaned up. I’ll take care of the rest.”

In terms of things he wanted to do, buzzing Spock’s door was never one of them. Buzzing Spock’s door at 04:00 was even lower on Leonard’s list of things he found enjoyable. But he was pretty well out of options right now.

The Vulcan answered his door, looking like he had been awake prior to Leonard’s intrusion, and simply raised his eyebrows, which for Spock may as well have been passing out in shock.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Leonard said, “It’s urgent.”

Spock listened dispassionately as ever with his hands clasped behind his back as Leonard explained his concerns about Jim’s behavior that day. Finally he held the piece of the broken vial out to Spock,

“This was one of the drugs he was trying to take with him. We use this to place patients in medically induced comas. It’s strictly regulated, you could easily kill someone with this if you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Or if you did,” Spock finally said, still looking mostly at the label on the glass. Leonard nodded slowly,

“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. I was willing to write off the rest of it as a problem between him and me specifically, even though I never really believed that. But this could affect the whole ship.”

“I agree with your assessment, doctor,” Spock said, voice still so even that Leonard nearly missed the unusual convergence of the first officer’s opinions with his own. “I have noticed slight changes in the captain’s behavior today as well which, when coupled with what you have told me, make for quite a concerning case. Have you had the chance to observe similar problems among the other members of today's landing party?”

“Not to the same extent, but I wasn’t around them as much and we don’t have the same...relationship as I have with Jim. Scotty was in a terrible mood this evening, though, told me to fuck off and mind my own business for asking how the away mission was. Having shared a bathroom with him for several years now, I can tell you his default when upset seems to be more on the quietly brooding and drinking end than on the yelling end.”

“I observed a sort of tension among both Lieutenant Uhura and Ensign Chekov while on the bridge yesterday. However, there was no mention of the away mission not going as planned. In fact, there was remarkably little discussion of the away mission at all.”

“There’s something else,” Leonard realized, so shocked by Spock’s easy agreement that he nearly forgot. “Earlier, Jim tried to order me to give him the vials without any explanation on his part.”

“According to regulation…” Spock started and Leonard nodded, cutting him off,

“I know. And so does Jim. You know he knows the rule book forward and backward, it’s like he always says, he has to know the rules so he can know which ones he can break. I can’t believe he would make a mistake like that, even if something happened down there. I’ve heard him quote the rule book so drunk he couldn’t remember it the next day, he wouldn’t forget that.”

“Leonard,” Spock began, surprising Leonard with the familiarity, “You do not need my permission for what you must do in this situation.”

He knew that, he knew there was really only one thing that  _ could _ be done right now, but he didn’t want to, dammit. 

“I know,” he said finally, “But it looks better when it’s not just my decision. We both know that.”

“You have my full support, doctor,” Spock agreed and Leonard sighed,

“Computer, let the record show that today, 2260.78 at 04:20 hours and effective immediately, Captain James Kirk, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, and Ensign Pavel Chekov have all been relieved of duty and confined to quarters, pending a full medical and psychological examination. This decision has been made in accordance with the best medical judgment of myself, Dr. Leonard McCoy, Lieutenant Commander and Chief Medical Officer of the USS Enterprise, medical authorization code 305KU39.”

“This decision has been made with support and agreement from myself, Commander Spock, first officer of the USS Enterprise, authorization code 40IMD57,” Spock added. The computer chimed in affirmation and the two men looked at each other for a moment before Spock spoke again, “Keep me abreast of the results of your examinations, doctor.”

Leonard nodded in agreement and went to leave the room. He had a lot of work to do. Just as he was about to walk through the door, though, he turned back,

“Thank you, Spock. I appreciate the support.”

Spock simply nodded, but it was one of those Spock nods that was more like a smile on a human, so Leonard smiled himself as he finally walked out of the first officer’s quarters. He really did have a lot of work to do.

Leonard knew he had made the right decision, and that was only affirmed when security tried to escort the members of the away team down to medbay for their assessments. They had fought security so hard that Leonard was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to examine any of them without sedating them. He decided to give them a bit of time first, maybe they just needed to adjust to the idea of being on temporary stand down. Leonard allowed himself several hours of midmorning sleep, only to have his door hiss open shortly after he woke up and began pulling his uniform back on.

“Hey, Bones!” Jim greeted him from the doorway, cheerful and bright. For the first time ever, Leonard briefly wished he kept a phaser in his quarters, but upon further inspection Jim was wearing a much more Jim-like smile on his face, in addition to...some sort of sparkly vest outfit that was somehow both absurd and absurdly hot at the same time. “Did’ya miss me?” Jim asked, seemingly oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong, as he spun a little on his heel, “What do you think of my new look? Really shows off the arms, I think. Let me tell you, though, I have had a  _ weird _ past 24 hours.”

“Jim?” Leonard asked, slowly walking across the floor to where Jim was still leaning against the door. This  _ felt _ like his Jim, but he wouldn’t put anything past whoever it was that came back yesterday.

“Yeah, Bones. Hey, do you by chance happen to have evil versions of Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, and myself running around here? Because they didn’t seem to be where  _ we _ were and…”

“McCoy to Hanlon,” Leonard cut Jim off, flipping open his communicator and comm-ing the chief of security who was currently outside Jim’s door, “Can you confirm that Captain Kirk is still in his quarters, and has not left?”   
“Affirmative, Doctor,” Hanlon’s voice came through. Jim stayed quiet. “The captain has not left his quarters since he was confined to them this morning. Granted, he’s been  _ trying _ , but…”   
“Thank you, lieutenant, that’s all,” Leonard remarked, flipping his communicator shut again.

“So that’s a yes on the evil doppelgangers thing then?” Jim asked.

“Tell me something only you would know. And then you damn well better explain to me what’s going on.”

“Every year, from the first year at the Academy, we have an unofficial tradition of drinking whiskey and sharing a secret the day before my birthday. That first year, you told me about your father. The second year, I told you about Tarsus. This past year, you told me you loved me, and I told you I loved you too. It’s me, Bones, I’m back,” Jim assured him, all crinkly soft smiles and that hesitant Jim Kirk vulnerability that told Leonard all he needed to know, regardless of what the other man had actually said.

“Thank fuck,” he breathed, pulling Jim, his Jim, in close, “Evil you was a pain in my ass.”

Jim kissed him, quickly but long enough for Leonard to  _ know _ , though he couldn’t really doubt anymore, then drew back and flung himself onto the couch in Leonard’s quarters,

“It was the weirdest thing, Bones. Something weird must’ve happened with the transporters because one moment I was calling for a beam up and the next I was standing on the transporter of the  _ Imperial  _ Starship Enterprise wearing a goddamn sparkly vest and surrounded by evil versions of everyone I knew. It nearly killed us, trying to get out of there. Scotty pulled it off just in time, like he always does. He’ll send these guys back to where they belong.”

“Goddamn transporters,” Leonard grumbled, “Have to admit, ‘send you to an alternate universe where everyone is evil’ was not on my list of reasons to hate the things before, but it is now.”

“I can’t imagine what you guys have been going through here. I read my service record there and, well, I did not seem to be a real standup guy.”

“It seemed like they were all trying to blend in, act as normal as possible but Spock and I sensed something was off. You...he, the other version of you, he pointed a phaser at me when I went to your quarters last night and he kissed me like it was a goddamn power play. Then I caught him trying to steal some serious drugs from medbay in the middle of the night and Spock and I confined them all to quarters and temporarily relieved them of duty. I’ll make an amendment in my log.”

“Wait, you kissed evil me?” 

“Give me a damn break, I didn’t know.”

“I’m not mad, it’s just real weird,” Jim assured him, and it was obvious in his eyes, Jim’s eyes, the real ones, that he wasn’t mad, more curious than anything else. “I should’ve kissed evil you, just to make the most of it. I mostly tried to avoid evil you, actually. I didn’t want him to catch on.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little mind, Jim, you’re a better kisser than the evil version of yourself,” Leonard half teased and Jim grinned at the compliment,

“Good. I’ve gotta go get these assholes off my ship, but I’ll take the rest of the day off. You don’t have to order me off shift or anything. I do think I’ll keep this vest, though.”

“You are not wearing that damn thing in public.”

“What about in private?” Jim asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. Leonard kissed him, because this was so his Jim and he had missed him, then sighed and stood up,

“We’ll see. Now let’s go, those people aren’t going to leave on their own accord. And Jim?”

“Yeah?” Jim asked, standing up as well and taking his hand.

“I’m never using a transporter again. And neither are you.”   


“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Jim rolled his eyes and smacked a kiss to Leonard’s cheek before they left his quarters to go finish this mess once and for all.


End file.
